In marketing of products/services and so forth, communications are made from one entity to another entity. Promotions, which are one type of communication, often elicit various responses from the entity receiving the communication, e.g., promotion. Responses can include visiting a web site, requesting information, or purchasing a product, and so forth. Many companies use predictive modeling techniques (e.g., response models and valuation models) to forecast customer responses given some prior promotion.
Additionally, when an entity responds to a promotion, the entity may provide non-identifying or identifying, e.g., unique information identifying the promotion to which the entity is responding. Based on the information, “direct response attribution” is determined. Response attribution (e.g., direct response attribution and inferred response attribution) refers to a number of responses (e.g., a number of purchases of a television) caused by a particular promotion (e.g., an e-mail advertisement). Because in direct response attribution, each response is commonly associated with information identifying the promotion to which the entity is responding, a marketer can easily determine the promotions that precipitated particular responses.